


Putting Out Fire With Gasoline

by shadeofwrong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3853420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadeofwrong/pseuds/shadeofwrong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier copes with his newfound freedom after the fall of SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Putting Out Fire With Gasoline

For all the modern violence and convenience seemingly programmed into him over time, the Soldier didn't expect relearning something as primitive as natural sleep to be such a struggle. However, even after running for days until exhaustion in his bones overpowered the paranoia thrumming in his skull, just setting his head on a pillow in a dirty, out of the way motel room made his skin crawl. The feeling of being inert on a slab again brought to mind the fragmented memories of his heartbeat slowing as his throat froze shut against silent shouts, and they sprang him right back to his feet. Only if he kept his knees defiantly bent upwards to be sure there was no metal door closing on him was he able to lay down. The ratty blanket and overly starched sheets beneath him were hardly comfortable, but it wasn't as if comfort was something he'd been acquainted with for a long time. 

The phantom pains were new, and maybe more unexpected than the insomnia. Maybe he was never out of cryostasis long enough to experience them before, or HYDRA scientists had a way to suppress them just like the rest of his emotional responses. The burning itch scaling up and down his metal arm was maddening; any move to scratch it was only met with the sensation of cold steel. In the silence of the night, he heard the compression of air and the clicking of joints beneath the armor as he clenched his fists. The Soldier tried to focus on other things. He needed to think about his next move.

So far the fall of SHIELD and the ensuing chaos had allowed him to slip away from Washington with relative ease. It wouldn't take long before the fragments of both groups formerly housed in the Triskelion would be after him, each for their own reasons. Neither of them would get the satisfaction of owning him-- no one would, ever again. He'd show them how much he meant that if he had to. 

During his escape, news everywhere let him know Pierce was dead. _Good_ was his knee jerk reaction. Guilt started to fall over him in spades for plenty of reasons since he snapped out of HYDRA control, but that thought didn't even raise a twinge in him. Objectively, he knew there were worse people than Pierce out there, but knowing he was dead gave the Soldier a satisfaction that carrying out a hit never did. So he let himself have that thought: _Pierce is dead. Good._ Pierce was dead and Steve was alive-- 

The Soldier shut his eyes. No. He wasn't ready to think down that path yet. The mental strain was more than he could stand, and quite simply, it hurt, more than the broken arm Steve gave him that healed faster than on any normal human. It hurt in a variety of ways he could learn to confront after remembering how to get some damn sleep. It was all he could do to keep his eyes closed; even the slightest lowering of his guard went against the instincts he was forced to build for so long. 

When he finally lost consciousness, it was more like passing out than really drifting to sleep, and for the first time in seventy years, he had dreams. Some were simple; he could only smell baking bread, and heard the rustle of leaves muffling car horns. Cutting through Brower Park, he remembered, to a bakery on Bergen Street. Running errands for a faceless woman several blocks away-- ten years old. The smell turned sour quickly enough, and he could see black smoke instead of the grey from a friendly crackling fire. He knew this smell more intimately. Gunpowder, dispensed shrapnel, and a ceaseless rain of bullets from Nazi ballistas. Before HYDRA, when the enemy was more easily defined by hateful swastikas emblazoned everywhere. The smell changed one more time and became acrid, the smell of wires and metal burning under a soldering iron and the high pitched sounds of whizzing machinery. Pleased foreign murmurs, and a crushing weight against what remained of his upper arm. 

The Soldier tried to wake, but his body's weariness wouldn't allow it. The dreams became clearer, and foreign voices quickly became just as defined as English. When did he learn Russian, German, all of them? How? After he was given the arm, his memories weren't as cloudy, but the gravity of them pressed on his chest like a millstone. One of his first times in reactivation, he was in Czechoslovakia during the uprising against the Soviets. 1968. HYDRA needed the tension between the eastern and western blocs to continue. Free for all of five hours, he massacred an entire revolutionary camp and weapons cache, crippling a crucial branch of their movement as the Red Army stormed the border. There would be no Prague Spring; it was then that they started to call him Winter. Not a boy fetching a loaf of bread, not a loyal US soldier dancing with the neighborhood girls at his regiment's send off ball, not one of the Howling Commandos. Nothing but the herald and promise of a cold, quiet, death. The carnage surged back to him like the hot, gushing blood coming out of a CIA operative's jugular. The Soldier almost felt it spattering in his face and trailing down the front of his flak jacket again, and was finally able to bolt up in bed, sweat rolling down his back. 

Gasping for breath, he looked down at his hands. The real one trembled, but his metal arm was as steady as always, ready to strike at a moment's notice. The Soldier felt disgust rise up to his throat, and without thinking, he punched through the dry wall with that murderous, heavy arm. The hole led to the bathroom, and he stumbled there with red flashing in his eyes. Yet, in the mirror, he saw that his face was clean, and his front was dry. The Soldier stared hard at himself, unshaven, his long hair unkempt and his eyes sallow, and he still didn't see Bucky Barnes. Only Steve Rogers still saw that man ( _Don't think there, it still_ hurts, he thought), buried under layers of time and whole eras of bloodshed. However, for the first time, he knew he couldn't be winter anymore, either. Whoever he was, he was going to find answers about the still missing fragments of his past, about why they didn't just let him _die_ , and without realizing it, maybe he was going to find a reason to live as a man, not a tool. 

It didn't matter what the answers were for now. The Soldier was going to find HYDRA, and he was going to make them pay.


End file.
